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Chapter Three

“The Pendleton family dapples the Virginia social scene with their Renegade blue and silver. But one particular Pendleton Princess is MIA. But no worries, my sweet puckleberries. Penni’s on the case!” Penni’s Puckleberry Tea

Boh

At the knock on my suite door, I tapped pause on the video I was watching and shoved the tablet under the blue blanket. Renegade blue because Brightside liked to kiss ass when it came to their number one financial benefactor.

Walsh strolled into my room, the smirk on his face putting my back teeth on edge and testing my patience. He tilted his phone in my direction as he came closer. “You are one lucky motherfucker.”

My fingers tightened into a fist around the folds of the blanket. “How do you figure?”

He wiggled the phone at me. If he didn’t answer me soon, I’d be snatching the thing out of his hand and hurling it against the far wall.

“The woman you took out in the lobby?” He shook his head, his smirk morphing into a full-blown grin. “She was headed up to visit Scout Pendleton. Pendleton, as in JT Pendleton’s granddaughter. As in the Renegade’s owner’s granddaughter.” He wagged his head, swiping something on his phone. “One lucky fucker.”

Since my last concussion, the second in less than six months, and the crash in Hammer’s Koenigsegg Regera a couple of weeks ago, patience was hard to come by. Everything and everyone conspired against me. How Walsh had the balls to label my current situation—chained to a hospital bed—lucky, I had no clue.

Walsh held his cell up to his face and spoke. “Hey, Melani, Trasier still in that meeting?”

He wasn’t and an instant later, I was in a video call on Walsh’s phone with the Renegade head coach, Etienne “E.T.” Trasier. E.T. played back in the day, a pretty decent defenseman, and he’d always been fair. But he’d lost his cool with Hammer’s and my stupidity in the middle of playoffs. No one had that kind of patience.

“Etienne, you’ll never believe what our boy stumbled into. One of the residents here is a granddaughter of the senior Mr. Pendleton. Scout is her name. And she has a friend that I think would make the perfect Designated Medical Guardian for Boh.”

I fell back, the sudden motion rocking the fancy hospital bed and shot a sharp look at Walsh. He ignored me, tilting the phone enough to keep us both in the shot. “I just sent her name—Novy Dalton—to our people to be cleared, but from the conversation I had with her, she’s perfect for our purposes. She’s CPR trained, currently works at an assisted living facility as a registered dietician. She meets the criteria in the Pendleton Concussion Clause. I think we could move her into Boh’s place pretty quickly, once we come to an arrangement.”

Walsh had disappeared earlier after getting me back into my suite. While I thought he’d headed out, he’d apparently chased down the woman from the lobby who had turned me down flat. Details he wasn’t sharing with Coach.

“She and Ms. Pendleton are on a roller derby team. And lucky for Boh, the team recently lost their lease and is having trouble landing a new one. With the youth league moving over to their new digs at the Renegade training facility last year, their old place is just sitting empty. I know there was talk of selling it, but maybe we can make some sort of arrangement and lease it to the derby team in exchange for Ms. Dalton assuming DMG duties?”

Surprise flashed in the coach’s eyes before he shut it down.

My pulse spiked then fell into a heavy, thumping rhythm. The delicious scent of freedom perfumed the air.

E.T. looked off into the distance, his emotionless profile filling the tiny phone screen. A minute later he turned back, his gaze slamming into mine. “If Walsh manages to get her to agree, I’ll sign off on it. She’s with you until you’re cleared to play, understand? No fucking around, no avoiding appointments with the trainers, the docs, all that shit. You toe the line or you’re in breach of your contract and Walsh won’t be the only lawyer involved. Novy and Scout grew up together. She might as well be another Pendleton the way they look after her. You cannot afford to fuck this up. We on the same page, Zacha?”

Anger, on a hair trigger lately, burned just beneath my skin. But this man could sit me out next season, send me down to the AHL, or worse, end my career altogether. “Yeah,” I said. “Same page.”

Within minutes, the team administrators had emailed a contract with names and terms to Walsh’s specifications.

“Let’s go to Ms. Pendleton’s room. Your savior may still be there, if your luck holds. I knew Trasier’d been in the inner circle since his player days, but did you catch that?” He didn’t wait for my reply, taking off to the door, motioning for me to hurry. “He knows both these women. This is gonna be a cakewalk. You are one lucky motherfucker.”

I shoved my legs off the bed and hauled the crutches up under my arms and hustled after him. The faster we got this bullshit guardian business handled, the faster I could be home in my own bed and out from under the constant surveillance of healthcare do-gooders.

We walked to the opposite wing from my suite and approached the last door in the hall. They’d propped it open with a big, ugly red chair. Walsh gave the jam a cursory knock before striding in like he owned the place. I trailed behind, navigating the narrow space not taken up by the chair, an unexpected flutter hitting my stomach as I hobbled into the room.

Without the haze of anger skewing my perception, and the opportunity to leave Brightside now a very real possibility, I arrowed in on the woman holding all the power. She didn’t realize it yet, but she could ask for damn near anything and I’d be falling over myself to give it to her.

She turned her head in my direction as we moved deeper into the room. Hair a mix of honey blond and light brown. Darker brows lifted as she caught me staring. I didn’t look away and her face softened somehow, even as she met my gaze head on.

Sparkling, bright eyes, the color too soft for me to make out across the distance. A wide mouth with a lower lip that pushed out a little with her hesitant smile. She tilted her head as I made my inventory, her ponytail long enough to swish over the slim curve of her shoulder. An electrical awareness skittered over my skin. The same sort of awareness that had me shifting into the perfect position to pick up a puck a half-second before my adversaries. That had my wrister sending that same puck into the back of the net. I rolled my shoulders.

“Ms. Pendleton, please pardon our interruption. I’m so relieved you’re still here, Ms. Dalton. May we have a moment of your time?”

“Haven’t we already been through everything? Do I need to hide out in another bathroom?”

I grunted, close to cracking a smile. It’d been weeks since I’d found humor in anything. But that made twice in a day this woman nearly bought one out.

Walsh barked out a laugh, the loud sound grating in the confines of the room. “I think you’ll want to hear us out. I really do.”

The attorney shifted around to the other side of the hospital bed, leaving me the space at the foot. A woman reclining on a pile of pillows grinned up at me, gleeful amusement narrowing her eyes and flushing her face. I rearranged my grip on the crutches and returned my gaze to Novy.

She’d sat forward in her chair, her arms propped on the side of her friend’s bed, her attention bouncing between me and Walsh. Wary but curious. Good sign.

Novy’s friend, the owner’s granddaughter, crossed her arms over her propped-up knee and motioned for Walsh to speak. “We’re listening.”

“When I came by earlier, I couldn’t help but hear about your derby team’s predicament. That you lost your lease?”

The redhead on the bed nodded, the smile slipping from her lips and her gaze darting toward her friend almost guiltily. “We did,” she said in a much quieter voice.

“What if I said Mr. Zacha could provide a facility in exchange for Ms. Dalton acting as his Designated Medical Guardian?”

Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “That would be amazing!”

“Scout! Not amazing. Not amazing at all.” Novy stood up, the pins and buttons dotting her jacket jangling with the abrupt movement. “I’m not interested.”

“Novy, we don’t have much time left at the rec center. A couple weeks and then there’ll be nowhere to practice.”

“We don’t really know these people and you’re signing me up to be some sort of babysitter for the rude one. Please, Scout, be reasonable.”

My hand spasmed around one of the crutches, knocking it against the foot of the bed with a clatter. “I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”

She turned a snarl my way. “Tell that to the clothes you destroyed downstairs,” she said, as if that made any sense at all.

She heaved in a deep breath, the motion pulling my gaze south to the half-top she wore, what looked like shoe strings lacing up the center between her full tits. The ends of the strings dangled over her bare stomach where a bright green gem winked up from her belly button. My fingers tightened around the handles of the crutches.

“Look,” I said, my jaw tight with the force of will I needed to keep my tone polite. “I need something. You need something. We can make some sort of deal.”

“Why do you need a babysitter, anyway?”

“I don’t need a fu—”

“Like Ms. Pendleton here, Mr. Zacha was in an accident. He’s been cleared to live off the Brightside campus, but not to live alone. This sounds crazy and out of the blue, I know. But you mentioned you work in healthcare earlier. And you’re connected to the owner’s family. Coach Trasier said you practically grew up a Pendleton.”

Her eyes narrowed on the lawyer. “I’m a dietician in an assisted living facility. I don’t deal with direct patient care except in emergency circumstances. This doesn’t look like an emergency.”

“Boh’s an employee of the Richland Renegades and under a strict contract. If he doesn’t abide by the team’s rules, he could be at risk.”

“Risk? Why would I want to sign up to be around some loose cannon?”

Her gaze raked me from head to toe, leaving a trail of unexpected heat, daring me to lunge at the bait peppering her words. “I’m not a loose cannon,” I said, grinding my back teeth. “That’s not what he meant by risk.”

“My friend, you are the textbook image of ‘loose cannon’.”

The pit in my stomach gurgled and spit, burning a path up the back of my throat. Besides the blurred and spotty vision, concussions could impact a man’s ability to control his temper. Some of the therapists here liked to toss around a handful of alphabet diagnoses, everything from PTSD to GAD, none of which meant shit since all that mattered was me hitting the ice again. As soon as possible.

And this woman was key to me getting back to playing. “Boxes to check,” the coach liked to say. I had boxes to check before I could even begin conditioning, much less working on the ice.

I turned to the woman on the bed, transferring both crutches to one side so I had a free hand. I motioned to the room around us. “You looking to extend your stay in this place? Or you looking to go home ASAP?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sooner.”

I nodded. “Exactly.” I fastened my attention back on Novy. “The difference is I have a fucking contract with a National Hockey League team. I am the team’s product. They control what I do, when I do it, pretty much down to when I’m allowed to piss. If I could do that from home instead of under a microscope here, you’d be doing me a solid.”

She flicked her thumb on the bright pink wheel of the skates laying on the bed beside her friend, sending it spinning with a soft whir of sound. Her head tipped down and the wheel slowly spun to a stop. I couldn’t read her expression, but I had the feeling I’d gained some ground.

“You didn’t bite at the offer of a car downstairs. What about cash? On top of the lease Walsh offered?”

She shook her head. “I’m not taking your money.”

That pit in my gut burned and I leaned closer. “Don’t be an idiot. This deal is nothing. All I need from you is a body in my apartment so my team is pacified and I get my life back. You’ll have your own space. We won’t even have to see each other, if we work it right.”

She sucked in a deep breath, shoulders heaving and her jacket jangling again, before tilting her chin up. “Can you guys step out for a few minutes?”

She didn’t wait for a reply, slipping to the entry and pulling the chair out of the way so she could hold the door open. Dragging out the minute, I shuffled my crutches back into place under my arms and slowly swung-walked to the door.

I stopped right in front of her. She dipped her gaze to my chest and avoided meeting my eyes. “Low risk, high reward. That’s what I’m offering right now. What’s that American saying? ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the face?’”

Her lips tightened, flattening out her lush lower lip. I’d been holed up in this rehab for too damn long and my body liked the sight of Novy Dalton too damn much. Potentially a problem, being holed up together in my apartment. But one of the first things I learned as a hockey player was discipline and prioritizing what would get me on the ice. Choosing between giving in to a passing interest in a woman and my passion for hockey? Not even a question.

I stepped through the door, ignored Walsh as he stood in the hall wagging his head like an old woman, and leaned against the wall. I’d give her her minute, but in the end, she’d see things my way. Anything else amounted to failure and I’d had my fill of failure. I’d fight for my future, even if it meant battling this beautiful woman.